The traditional IT vs. Finance gap and why it is essential to overcome that for EPM success.
Everyone loves a rivalry, at least when it comes to sports teams. It seems that the bitterer and longer running the rivalry, the better. When it comes to corporate politics, there can be few rivalries as legendary or potent as that between IT and Finance.
No one knows when it all started, but make no mistake, this can be trench warfare that started long before computers were even used in business. I can imagine the conflict raging so long, that there may have been a dialog like this in ancient times, “I simply can’t let you operate the wheel on your own, you don’t have the technical skills. Why don’t you tell me what you need the wheel to do, and I will operate it for you…just so there aren’t any mistakes?” “What? It’s just a stupid wheel; surely I am qualified to figure this out. Let me try it and we’ll see how it goes.”
Topics:
Best Practices,
Process Improvement,
Thought Leadership,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
Financial Information Management
Inspired by my colleague from Column5 EMEA’s use of a military reference, I’d like to discuss some of the parallels of 2500 year old military tactics to EPM strategic objectives.
Topics:
Best Practices,
Thought Leadership,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)
This month marks Column5’s 10th anniversary, and we are excited to be celebrating so many years of providing top-notch consulting services to our customers. In the end, there are two groups who enable Column5 to have such a rich history of success.
Topics:
OutlookSoft,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
Training,
BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)
Winston Churchill’s friend once said of him, “Winston is a man of simple tastes, he is always prepared to put up with the best of everything.” The desire for the best is something everyone covets, but this aspiration becomes problematic when “best” cannot readily be defined. So how would you know if you received the best?
Topics:
Best Practices,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
Training,
Performance
Economic challenges are all around today’s market. We hear about struggling companies that are suffering from poor performance. We know that companies don’t exactly come with manuals for the CEO to reference when things aren’t going well. In the past, conventional wisdom was to focus on the core money making operations of the enterprise. A car manufacturer that also dabbles in satellite technology, a TV manufacturer that also makes laptops, and newspaper that also owns real estate are examples of companies that, when times get difficult, have decided to dump ventures not aligned with the company’s core competencies. That’s what makes Gartner’s assessment (
Business Intelligence: A Core Business Competency) extremely important.
Topics:
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
Business Intelligence (BI),
Analytics,
EPM ROI,
Value,
BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)
This is an old story we see all the time. A policeman happens upon a drunk frantically searching for something at the base of a streetlight. “Hello there, looking for something?” The drunk looks up, “Yesh Offisher, I lost my keysh in the park.” “In the park? Then why are you looking on this street corner?” says the confused cop. “The light is better here!” says the drunk.
This is the problem with how EPM projects are governed today, and no, I am not implying drunks are prevalent in EPM! Too often prospects make decisions based solely on price, thinking that value is equivalent across service providers, and net ROI is maximized by selecting the lowest cost implementation proposal. I encourage customers to stop and think about what they get with the low cost provider. A team that doesn’t have the ability to offer the appropriate breadth services that are specifically designed to add value while reducing risk, leave only the lowest common denominator of value in their wake.
Topics:
Best Practices,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
EPM ROI,
Value,
Implementation,
BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)
For many companies, its getting to be that time of year again. No, I am not talking about getting ready for Christmas decorating contests in the office...although that is not far off. I am talking about getting ready for the big annual plan.
Topics:
Process Improvement,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
Project Management
At the Apollo temple in Delphi (Greece), an ancient quote is carved in stone, alternately translated as "Nothing in excess" or "All things in moderation". This is a great credo to live by as we all know what excess can bring, especially if we think about things that may seem to be good at the outset. In life, we can think of things like food, wine, and even work that - when managed in small quantities are indeed good things, but when taken to excess, they can become destructive.
Topics:
Best Practices,
Performance,
Implementation
"They spill more beer than we make in a year!" That line was from a great beer commercial for a small brewery that claimed small, handmade batches (or microbrews) were superior to the huge commercial operations of the beer manufacturing kings. Consequently, sales of "microbrews" took off, with consumers deciding that selecting a personal favorite from a market rich with a variety of choices was superior to buying beer from the monolith that had "regular" and "light" to choose from.
Topics:
Thought Leadership,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
Roadmap,
Value,
Data,
BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)
A cloud buster is a device invented by Austrian Wilhelm Reich, who claimed to be able to produce rain by draining energy from the cloud--effectively "busting a cloud." This far-fetched claim reminds me of some of the outlandish claims being made about how revolutionary cloud technology is these days. The fact is, the cloud has its place for some customers, but it is not quite the ultimate enterprise performance management (EPM)solution as it may be billed. The goal of this post is to discuss the realities, pros, and cons of the cloud deployment model that is becoming more popular in the market.
Topics:
Thought Leadership,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
Cloud,
Performance,
Value,
BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)